Buy a PC or build?

M

Michael

Okay here is the situation. I have never built a pc, but have upgraded at
some point every piece of hardware except mobo, power supply, or cpu. So the
question is should I buy a pc or build? I am a gamer and have ruled out
upgrading my current PC as it uses rdram and would have to take out a loan
just to upgrade the memory. I looked at Dell, but am leery of there quality
of late. Voodoo, Vicious, Alienware, etc seem a little extreme in pricing.
The main problem I have is I really don't know any thing about what are good
mobo's and have this vision of totally frying the cpu and mobo the first
time I hook them up. :) I am leaning towards AMD as that seems to be less
expensive. I have read a few articles that say the P4 is a better CPU for
gaming is this the general consensus? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

My current PC is:
P4 1.5
256 mb rdram
60 gig HD
DVD
CDRW
geforce2 32 mb
 
S

Shep©

Okay here is the situation. I have never built a pc, but have upgraded at
some point every piece of hardware except mobo, power supply, or cpu. So the
question is should I buy a pc or build? I am a gamer and have ruled out
upgrading my current PC as it uses rdram and would have to take out a loan
just to upgrade the memory. I looked at Dell, but am leery of there quality
of late. Voodoo, Vicious, Alienware, etc seem a little extreme in pricing.
The main problem I have is I really don't know any thing about what are good
mobo's and have this vision of totally frying the cpu and mobo the first
time I hook them up. :) I am leaning towards AMD as that seems to be less
expensive. I have read a few articles that say the P4 is a better CPU for
gaming is this the general consensus? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

My current PC is:
P4 1.5
256 mb rdram
60 gig HD
DVD
CDRW
geforce2 32 mb

On price there are some great ready built deals but as you have had
quite a bit of experience then I'd go for a self build.
There is no difference in most games between AMD and Intel
CPUs merely the price.Same goes for stability.Having built/used and
played through both I can say this from both sides and my preferences
now are merely on,"Bang-for-Buck" so it's AMD for me.
I have yet to find a mother board maker including,"Top-end"
boards that have a 100% QC system.I've used cheap PCcchips/Jetways and
expensive Abits/Asus/Intels etc and it's,"luck of the draw" AFAIC but
what I can say is that there are good and bad suppliers.

One trick I do use it to price up off the net and then try and get a
local trusted dealer to match it as close as possible.Then if I have a
problem I can go back and smack them in the mouth<grin>.However there
are some good brands and models of devices and some lower end things
not to get like Nvidia MX cards if you are a gamer or the lower end G5
series.
As for things like hard drives you just have to watch
around to see if there's a,"Model" fault.I've never had any problems
with Fujitsu/IBM/Maxtor drives whereas some people will have.I now
stick with Maxtor as they keep their,"No-Quibble" 3 year return policy
no matter where you bought the drive so long as you run their free
Diagnostic program before and if you have to return a drive.
As for actual building you will get help on usenet groups likes this
and also,
http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/tutorials/

Small basic toolkit.
Small torchlight.
Magnetized screwdrivers(to pick up the screws you,"Will" drop<grin>).
Pair of Tweezers to help remove and change Clear Cmos jumper and hard
drive/Cdrom jumpers

TIP:
New mother boards usually come with a plastic foam underlay in the
box.Place this under the mother board when fitting to the case as it
helps prevent the possibility of a loose screw from going under the
case and shorting the board thus destroying it.I have had to replace
several mother boards for people where this has happened due to
vibrations from Cdrom drives that have loosened screws usually caused
by crappy PC mag Cdrom disks!!
TIP:
Any spare Jumper connectors that may remove stick securely to the base
off the case with some sticky tape.You never know when you may need
them.
TIP:
Make sure you have enough cables and screws for all devices.
TIP: RTFM!! :D


HTH :)



--
Free Windows/PC help,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/trouble.html
email shepATpartyheld.de
Free songs download,
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/8/nomessiahsmusic.htm
 
D

Dave C.

Michael said:
Okay here is the situation. I have never built a pc, but have upgraded at
some point every piece of hardware except mobo, power supply, or cpu. So the
question is should I buy a pc or build? I am a gamer and have ruled out
upgrading my current PC as it uses rdram and would have to take out a loan
just to upgrade the memory. I looked at Dell, but am leery of there quality
of late. Voodoo, Vicious, Alienware, etc seem a little extreme in pricing.
The main problem I have is I really don't know any thing about what are good
mobo's and have this vision of totally frying the cpu and mobo the first
time I hook them up. :) I am leaning towards AMD as that seems to be less
expensive. I have read a few articles that say the P4 is a better CPU for
gaming is this the general consensus? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

My current PC is:
P4 1.5
256 mb rdram
60 gig HD
DVD
CDRW
geforce2 32 mb

The general consensus is that the new AMD chips kick the crap out of
anything Intel has ever produced, as far as gaming is concerned. Also, the
non-game performance of the latest AMD chips is equal to the performance of
the latest Intel chips in all areas except for those applications that are
usually not performed on an "IBM-compatible". In other words, if you want
to do video editing, the P4 chips are slightly better. Too bad most of that
work is done on Macs. :)

If you build, you will spend more than a pre-built system. It is impossible
to match the price of a pre-built system, unless you are shooting for
bleeding edge technology. Then it's a wash, as far as price goes. If you
are careful, you can keep the cost of a system you build yourself down
pretty close to pre-built price. Plus you get to pick all your own
components. If you are smart about it, you might spend 10% more to get a
system that's at least 50% better.

I'd suggest you take all of the DRIVES (HD, CDR/W, DVD) out of your current
system and scrap the rest, INCLUDING the case and power supply. (all your
drives appear good enough for now and easy to replace later)

Find a good board that supports the Athlon 64 (SIS chipset, VIA or nvidia,
in that order) and don't skimp on the power supply. While building, pay
close attention to the directions for installing the CPU and don't forget to
plug in the CPU fan. Do yourself a favor and back up all your data files
and reinstall your OS on a freshly formatted hard drive. Set aside two full
days for tinkering, AFTER you are sure that you have all the parts gathered.
Your case and/or motherboard should come with all the cables and screws you
will need. If you want a quiet system, buy a quiet power supply, quiet CPU
cooler and quiet case fan(s). You won't spend any more to do it RIGHT, but
you might have to shop around for two or three vendors, as it's unlikely you
will find all your first choice components at one vendor. Remember to set
aside two full days for tinkering. Don't try to throw it together in a
couple of hours. Haste makes waste, y'know. But if you finish faster,
GREAT! My last system I built was actually running within two hours,
including OS install. But of course the next two days were spent
reinstalling software and "tweaking" to get it all organized and running the
way I like it. Have fun with it. :) -Dave
 
R

Ruel Smith (Big Daddy)

Okay here is the situation. I have never built a pc, but have upgraded at
some point every piece of hardware except mobo, power supply, or cpu. So
the question is should I buy a pc or build? I am a gamer and have ruled
out upgrading my current PC as it uses rdram and would have to take out a
loan just to upgrade the memory. I looked at Dell, but am leery of there
quality of late. Voodoo, Vicious, Alienware, etc seem a little extreme in
pricing. The main problem I have is I really don't know any thing about
what are good mobo's and have this vision of totally frying the cpu and
mobo the first
time I hook them up. :) I am leaning towards AMD as that seems to be less
expensive. I have read a few articles that say the P4 is a better CPU for
gaming is this the general consensus? Any help would be greatly
appreciated.

My current PC is:
P4 1.5
256 mb rdram
60 gig HD
DVD
CDRW
geforce2 32 mb

Here's my $.02: Build. While it's true that the gap in cost between building
and buying has narrowed on the high end, and buying is almost definitely
better on the low, upgradablility is the biggest issue. Since I built, and
everything is based on standards, I can upgrade my MB, CPU, and memory and
get basically an all new system for a couple of hundred bucks that's
relatively state of the art. I don't have to change cases or anything.
Also, I overclock - something that's impossible on a Dell or Gateway. My
computer is a 2.6 GHz P4, but it's running at 3.0 GHz. That's another
thing. My system has a 400 MHz FSB, but I could easily run a processor
based on a 533 MHz FSB by using the OC features. Now it does have its
limits, though. I can't run an 800 MHz FSB P4.

I built a computer for $2200 that a similar Alienware cost $3200+ at the
time I built it. I put everything high-end in the system for the time I
built it. I know the quality of every component that went into it and I can
proudly say I built it.

--
Big Daddy Ruel Smith

My SuSE Linux machine uptime:
9:52pm up 30 days 6:37, 3 users, load average: 0.70, 0.26, 0.09

My Windows XP machine uptime:
Something less...
 
R

Roy Coorne

Ruel Smith (Big Daddy) wrote:
....
Here's my $.02: Build. While it's true that the gap in cost between building
and buying has narrowed on the high end, and buying is almost definitely
better on the low, upgradablility is the biggest issue. Since I built, and
everything is based on standards, I can upgrade my MB, CPU, and memory and
get basically an all new system for a couple of hundred bucks that's
relatively state of the art. I don't have to change cases or anything.
Also, I overclock - something that's impossible on a Dell or Gateway....

Fully ACK - upgradability is the biggest issue! - and the tendency of
the big OEMs towards 'proprietary' 'standards' (deviating from ATX,
e.g.) is your enemy when you are going to adapt your computer to the
requirements of new games.
The marketing principle is to lure users with low entry prices and to
make money with additional components, maintenance, updating and
upgrading (sometimes even with shipping;-)

Therefore: Believe Big Daddy:)

Roy
 
J

jeffc

Michael said:
Okay here is the situation. I have never built a pc, but have upgraded at
some point every piece of hardware except mobo, power supply, or cpu. So the
question is should I buy a pc or build?

Depends on your goals. The 2 advantages of building are
a) you get exactly what you want for every single item. This is rarely
possible with a ready-made system
b) the satisfaction of doing it and learning it - it's an interesting hobby
I am leaning towards AMD as that seems to be less
expensive. I have read a few articles that say the P4 is a better CPU for
gaming is this the general consensus?

No. I would say most ready-made systems are Pentium, and a AMD is more
popular among builders.
 
N

news.demon.co.uk

Go for it. Set yourtself a budget. See what product you can afford then
research those products on the review sites. Read up on building your own
system. I agree with other posts do a fresh OS install also.

Have fun :)

JaMMeR
 
A

Ancra

Okay here is the situation. I have never built a pc, but have upgraded at
some point every piece of hardware except mobo, power supply, or cpu. So the
question is should I buy a pc or build? I am a gamer and have ruled out
upgrading my current PC as it uses rdram and would have to take out a loan
just to upgrade the memory. I looked at Dell, but am leery of there quality
of late. Voodoo, Vicious, Alienware, etc seem a little extreme in pricing.
The main problem I have is I really don't know any thing about what are good
mobo's and have this vision of totally frying the cpu and mobo the first
time I hook them up. :) I am leaning towards AMD as that seems to be less
expensive. I have read a few articles that say the P4 is a better CPU for
gaming is this the general consensus? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Consistently good mobos are Asus. That said, Abit and others often
produce gems too. Moving successively down in price, MSI, EPoX and
Shuttle seems to be doing well.

I've also seen Soltek, in budget sector, occasionally get praised in
reviews. Friend of mine has a Soltek. Nothing to complain about. 100%
flawless operation for some 20 months. Soltek get's citicized for poor
ergonomics though. Inconvenient component placement, makes CPU-cooler,
AGP and RAM slots interfere with each other. My friend has not said a
word about that though, and closeness could be an aspect of good
engineering in other terms, I suppose.

Good chipsets for AMD are nForce. That said, it seems hard to find
people speaking bad about SIS (as well as hard to find SIS chipsets
;)), and even VIA occasionally produce something that may usable ;-).
And at least currently, they seem to have the best AMD64 chipset out,
KT800. Though I remain unconvinced it's fit for use, :-/. ...Let's say
I'm not exactly embracing all things VIA immediatly... In all
fairness, they (KT800) seem to work, and, bios&driver updates will
probably eventually fix any encountered problem.
Good chipsets for P4 are Intel.

"P4 better for gaming" is real BS. There's no truth in such a
statement. It's the other way around. Since the introduction of the
K7, AMD has mostly been the best choice for gaming. It's even more so,
if you consider the cost of the CPU. There may have been brief
periods, such as when the 3.2GHz@800MHz FSB P4 was released, when some
PC rags and websites may have made a lot of noises about the P4. But
that's just temporary fluctuations.

And perhaps also relies on the way most game benchmarks are
constructed. Typical game benchmarks plays a fix 3D 'video'. This only
measures 3D-engine performance and DX 3D-hardware pipeline. Both the
3D-engine and DX are exactly the type of code that can be (and is)
vectorized-optimized for the P4. - And _ONLY_ under such circumstances
(and/or hyperthreading), can the P4 hope to match or exceed AMDs K7 &
K8 cores.

I don't know how big impact other things in games are going to affect
real game performance. I'm dying for finding out. It might not prove
to be much, but on code like AI and pathfinding, corresponding AMD
cores are twice as fast as the P4. So there is some possibility of
current game benchmarking being misleading. On the other hand, the
P4's better bandwidth should pick up the edge some of the time.

My rule of thumb is: For games, AMD(K7) XP ratings falls in between
533fsb and 800fsb MHz-clocks for the P4. And I think I'll continue to
stick to that for now. (Meaning: 2.4GHz P4@533 < XP 2400+ < 2.4GHz
P4@800). But actually, it depends on what benchmark you're looking at,
so there's no exact answer.

K8 (Athlon64) ratings are a different issue, since even the lowest
3000+ is definitly superiour to any&all existing P4s.

My recommendations are either the sub $90 AthlonXP 2500+, the $210
Athlon64 3000+ or the $460 Athlon64 3400+, depending on your budget.
Though as I said, I'm a bit wary of A64 mobos as of yet. There's a
couple of new chipsets due, nForce3-250 and SIS755.

If you do insist in getting a P4 anyway, try get a HT and 800MHz FSB,
(or at least 533FSB version), DDR400 and mobo to match (My own P4s are
older, but people I trust recommend Asus P4C800). Just drop down in
clockrate if you think you can't afford 800FSB. The faster FSB really
puts a spark of life into the P4. The 2.6 and 2.8 P4C looks good to
me. I'm sure HT is going to be increasingly useful as well.

- Do not, repeat, absolutely not, under any circumstances, ever buy a
Celeron! If there were a 4GHz Celeron available, your 1.5 P4 would
probably still be faster. No smilie here, because I'm not joking, and
I don't think Intels ongoing Celeron scam is particularly funny
either!

If you choose the AthlonXP or P4 you'll be stuck with 32-bit. That's
no big deal, because you can make it so cheap, you save the money to
upgrade later. That's why I strongly recommend avoiding highend 32-bit
solutions like XP3200+, 3.0 and 3.2GHz P4s. They're more expensive,
but not much faster. If you really want to spend money, spend it on
the videocard.

If you pick DDR400 ram (PC3200 CL2.5) to run on DDR333 in sync with a
333FSB AthlonXP, try if it works on CAS latency 2.0 instead of 2.5.
Mine did (XP3000+), and it picks up a bit of speed.
Don't use anything else than 1 or 2 similar ram modules in either an
AthlonXP or P4. If you do, bandwidth will suffer for the Athlon.
Funnily, this doesn't affect performance much, except in some cases.
The P4 is more seriously affected. You will get increased latency and
a constant overall decrease in performance, as much as 30%.
My suggestion is a single 512MB stick, to eventually be complemented
by another similar 512MB stick.

A good videocard is extremely important. The recommended stuff right
now is entire ATI Radeon9600 family (currently 4 chipset versions,
9600SE, 9600, 9600pro, 9600XT, in increasing performance&cost),
nVidias FX5700 (particularly recommended for OpenGL users) and
downrated budget versions of Radeon9800 (SE) and FX5900 (XT). The most
clueless thing I know, is saving on the videocard to put the money in
the cpu instead. Particularly for gaming, that's a real mistake!

I'm a complete idiot when it comes to CPU-coolers and PSUs, so
somebody else have to help you and me there.
My current PC is:
P4 1.5
256 mb rdram
60 gig HD
DVD
CDRW
geforce2 32 mb

RDRAM! - Wow! Except for that, I have an old 512mb, similar 1.5 P4. I
think it's dreadfully slow.
A XP2500+, nForce2, DDR333, 9600pro will blow your socks off. :)
Good luck!


ancra
 
R

Ruel Smith (Big Daddy)

Go for it. Set yourtself a budget. See what product you can afford then
research those products on the review sites. Read up on building your own
system. I agree with other posts do a fresh OS install also.

Have fun :)

While you're at it, let me give you some advice:

Though there are a few good motherboard manufacturers out there, you can't
go wrong with an Asus board. I'm convinced that Asus has a slight quality
edge over the competition.

Although you don't necessarily need a Radeon 9800XT, getting a good graphics
card will future-proof your 3D experience. My older computer has a 2.6 GHz
P4 and I had it overclocked to 2.86 with regular DDR266 memory (512 MB) and
an nVidia GeForce Ti4600 card. That was the high end card at the time I
built and I paid $400 for it. My best friend and brother build almost
identical systems with P4's @ 3.0 GHz and overclocke a bit more, one with
1GB Dual Channel DDR433 and the other with 512 MB DDR400 but both had an
ordinary Radeon 9600 graphics card that they both got for a steal. Guess
who has better frame rates? When my system had nothing more than a 2.0 GHz
P4 (no OC), I had framerates as good as theirs.

I told my brother that 512 MB of memory was enough, but after opening some
big apps and having a mail client open and a browser, etc., my physical
memory is getting really low. Therefore, I recommend 1 GB if you can afford
it. 512 will get you by, though.

Get SATA drives with 8 MB cache. They're worth it. Also, get drives with the
highest platter density you can afford. Plain and simple, denser platters
means the heads get from point A to point B in a shorter distance and
therefore much faster. And if you want pure speed from your HDD, defrag
often and there's no better defrag app than Diskeeper Pro 8. It made my HDD
benchmarks skyrocket after thorough boot time and regular defrags. I
personally run RAID, and I love it, but it's not for everyone.

Power supply is everything. Make sure it's 350 watts plus and it's quality
like CoolerMaster or Antec. This is one part to not skimp on. You can get
an Antec case and pay little more than the price of their power supply
alone and get a case with it. Great deal.

Case cooling is a priority if you want to OC. My case (Antec Performance
SX1040) has 2 front, 2 rear, and one side 80mm fans. Sure, there's some
noise, but it's tolerable. My buddy built a system based on the Antec
Sonata case that's got 2 large 120mm fans and the front fan has bad
placement. When he OC'd, his cpu got 10 degrees Celcius warmer than my cpu
does. It makes a difference.

--
Big Daddy Ruel Smith

My SuSE Linux machine uptime:
4:54pm up 31 days 1:39, 3 users, load average: 0.14, 0.11, 0.04

My Windows XP machine uptime:
Something less...
 
F

Frank Fussenegger

One way to have your cake and eat it too is to use a good fan
contoller to run the fans at a low speed until things heat up. I use
a Matrix Orbital LCD display/fan controller to run my front (2) and
rear (1) fans at 25% power (PWM) until the interior air temperature
rises above 88 degF. I have a top blowhole fan that I leave off
(since it is the noisiest) until the interior air temperature rises
above 89 degF, which is almost never. This makes for a very quiet
solution.
 
C

Carbon

My recommendations are either the sub $90 AthlonXP 2500+, the $210
Athlon64 3000+ or the $460 Athlon64 3400+, depending on your budget.
Though as I said, I'm a bit wary of A64 mobos as of yet. There's a
couple of new chipsets due, nForce3-250 and SIS755.

[... ]
A XP2500+, nForce2, DDR333, 9600pro will blow your socks off. :)

Especially since the XP2500+ Barton overclocks so easily. I built a
machine using one of these for the first time yesterday on an nforce2-400
mainboard with 2x256 ddr400.

Anyway, on my first trip through the bios I mistakenly set the cpu
multiplier to the fsb speed of 400mhz. Bam! Instant XP3200+!! Stock
voltage, stock heatsink and fan, stock everything. I left it that way for
hours and the cpu temp never climbed over 35c. Amazing.

You don't often run into a cpu that overclocks as well as the xp2500+. Imo
it's the best cpu deal on the market right now.
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Similar Threads

Build Gaming PC Advice 12
Gaming PC Build Recommendations Help Needed 2
New build questions 45
Build or Buy? 14
What should I buy? 3
Build or Buy? 8
Noob 1st build - quiet cool PC 2
New PC build problems 10

Top